Moor Mother: Black Encyclopedia Of The Air

- Moor Mother is the stage name of Pennsylvania-based poet, musician, and activist Camae Ayewa. Her new album, Black Encyclopedia of the Air, follows up a busy 2020 in which she delivered the spellbinding free jazz, jazz poetry album and theatre piece Circuit City, field recordings and sound collage album Clepsydra, as well as collaborative projects with master lyricist and rapper Billy Woods, captivating poet and vocalist YATTA, mind-melting noise rock musician Mental Jewellery, and Swedish producer Olof Melander, who also produced most of the new album.

Further worth noting is Moor Mother’s work as part of activist-oriented free jazz ensemble Irreversible Entanglements, whose two albums are criminally underrated and her experimental hip-hop and deconstructed club fusion project 700 Bliss with DJ Haram. She is also one half of the artistic collective Black Quantum Futurism, which is an approach to living and experiencing reality that aims to manipulate time and space to see possible futures and Moor Mother’s music is informed by BQF’s methodologies.

Black Encyclopedia of the Air sonically charts many different waters, pulling together influences ranging from gospel, to hip hop and R&B, field recordings, sound collage, blues, and punk. Her poetry and songwriting takes cues from poets like Maya Angelou and Sonia Sanchez and even punk legends Bad Brains. This is the first of a triptych of albums, with follow-up Jazz Codes announced for next year. Although Moor Mother has elected to go in a more accessible direction on the first two outings, Black Encyclopedia of the Air remains highly subversive and poignant and certainly doesn’t water down any of the important messages she’s conveying.

Right out of the gate on opening track Temporal Control of Light Echoes, Moor Mother invites listeners to see with her eyes her prophetic Afrofuturistic worldview: “And now here I am in this place / This place / I know it, I think it's mine / Because it’s got my eyes, my crooked smile / This place / And when I'm hurting, I look outside and everyone else is hurting too / This place is a gathering of bones”. Another high point is the dystopian surveillance state channelled by Iso Fonk. Over a chilling, sparse beat Moor Mother recites: “Everybody lie / We all want a little piece / The land cry, 'lamb die' / And brought Jesus to the feast / More than wine”. The song-writing and composition of these cuts brings me similar chills to the work of experimental producer and singer Pan Daijing.

The beats across this record wouldn’t sound out of place on projects by the various conscious hip-hop artists that Moor Mother has collaborated with, both here and beyond, such as Elucid and Billy Woods. There was clearly a lot of thought behind these collaborations as well. Pink Siifu’s mellow, hushed sing-rapping melts into the funky production of the cut Obsidian, while UK rapper Brother May’s unique and deadpan flow complements the techno and future-influenced production of Race Function Limited.

Don’t be conned by the increased accessibility that comes with the more laidback approach and many of the lush sonic textures across this record: Moor Mother remains at her defiant best as she continues to dismantle oppressive socio-temporal constructs. We hear her channel her fury and punk and noise influences on cuts like Zami, but tracks like Shekere will hopefully bring her time-travelling, Afrofuturistic worldview to a wider audience. That’s a wonderful thing, because Moor Mother is a voice in modern hip-hop that people need to hear - as far as the convergence of poetry and experimental music goes, she continues to remind me a lot of Saul Williams. Despite the short runtime, this album has far more to say than certain mainstream hip-hop releases this year that run three times as long. On top of that Black Encyclopedia of the Air also rewards attentive ears that are willing to go back and really unpack Moor Mother’s ever-captivating, inquisitive, and enlightening songcraft.

- Jack Jones.
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